DEAREST CHICKADEES, If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen: so said some wag other than Dame Evelyn, who spent much of the last month getting out of the fog, only to return to ... heat. Heat in the kitchen, no less. One does not really care to cook when the little Sharper Image digital thermometer atop the refrigerator reports that it is 85 degrees – inside – at eight in the evening. Using the oven is out of the question; even boiling water for some simple pasta would produce intolerable Dampfsauna conditions. One should not be dripping sweat while sitting down to dinner. That is not the Dame Evelyn way.

What, then, is the Dame Evelyn way? Going out? Dame Evelyn sat in a neighborhood restaurant on a recent Sunday evening and roasted, despite all the doors and windows being thrown open. Take-out? A last resort, rich in implied disgrace. Less disgraceful, and Dame Evelyn's next-to-last resort, was to light the charcoal grill on the deck, grill some tomatoes, onions, unpeeled garlic cloves, and onions for salsa (when they were charred and tender, into the food processor they went, with cilantro, lime juice, and several pinches of salt), then plop an ovenproof Calphalon skillet onto the grate, add some olive oil, sauté some chopped onion and garlic, add ground turkey with chili powder and ground cumin, and let it sizzle until cooked through. The turkey was then spooned into some warmed, oversized tortillas, along with the salsa and some grated jack cheese, to make burrito-quesadilla thingies. Not at all bad. Just a single sullied pan (and of course the food processor bowl, which goes into the dishwasher). A nice green salad on the side, with some sliced heirloom tomatoes and chunks of avocado. To drink: homemade apple cider, well chilled. For dessert: slices from the latest in a season's worth of excellent watermelons. And a cooling nightcap of Eiswein. Not quite a no-sweat dinner, but not bad.

And ... Dame Evelyn has a new e-mail address. It is dame_evelyn@hotmail.com. Write to me salaciously, freely, constantly.

Hotly, E.G.-S.

Is turkey the other other white meat, or what?
Contact Evelyn Grosvenor-Smythe at dame.evelyn@comcast.net.